


my tongue like lead

by annperkinsface



Category: In the Heights - Miranda
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 11:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8842711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annperkinsface/pseuds/annperkinsface
Summary: When she was younger they called her gringa.(Nina and Spanish.)





	

When she was younger they called her gringa. It was lovingly meant, the same way they'd call her flaquita in the same breath, and Nina would smile as her eyes and cheeks ached, all the while chafing violently under her skin.  
  
She loved the songs, ate the food, hoarded the cuss words, laughed about the telenovelas, but none of that mattered when Spanish wouldn't trip from her tongue. And how could it, with a tongue so clumsy and thick, and gringa like a spell over her, freezing it to the roof of her mouth?  
  
"It's yours if you want it to be, nena," Camila would say, gently, and Nina didn't know how to make her mother understand it wasn't a question of _want_.  
  
So Nina wore her shame like a cloak around her, hating the white girl in her Spanish class who could roll her r's, hating English, hating herself. She hated Kevin sometimes, too, for taking the choice out of her hands. English didn't feel like an advantage. It felt like a curse.  
  
Boricua. Puertorriqueña. Gringa.  
  
Nina sometimes felt like Spanish would never really be hers.

When she was thirteen she spent an afternoon with Abuela Claudia, watching her feed the birds, and wondered about stories, the ones she knew and ones she didn't, and wanted, quite suddenly, to hear them told anew, to hear them the way abuela lived them. Doubt and shame ruled her, and her tongue might be lead, but words also rested right underneath, if she only let herself be brave.

Because Nina wanted all of them. Not just abuela's, or her titi and tío she saw every six to eight years, but every person on this block who didn't speak a lick of English and knew and loved her anyway.  
  
She breathed in crisp, autumn air, trapping it in her lungs, and slowly, fumblingly, asked.

 

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so this is probably the most personal story i've ever written for all that it's 300 words. nina rosario has been the forever girl of my heart since i fell in love with in the heights years and years ago, as someone who is also an anxious boricua college student, and when she talks about puerto rico in when you're home it's like a punch to the fucking gut, to hear that actually articulated.
> 
> 'working harder, learning spanish' - i imagine kevin to be like my father who while i grew up speaking a little wanted us to be english speaking primarily and thus only compounding her (and my) feeling of disconnect growing up.


End file.
